Sadiq Khan after it was announced key bus routes at risk of being axed had been saved

• YOUR editorial takes the cynical view that the prospective cuts to Camden (and many other) bus routes were simply a political ploy to lever money out of the Treasury, (Were bus cuts woven into an unworthy political stunt? November 24).

But the fact remains that the despicable Johnson / Osborne deal to scrap government funding for TfL still leaves London’s transport in permanent financial and political danger from a government that despises public services and viscerally loathes the mayor, because he heads an opposition enclave in the heart of the capital.

If Sadiq Khan had chosen trimming of budgets, clandestine cuts and tinkering across the board to try and work with the money offered, there would have been little outcry and everyone would have suffered.

By making the Treasury-imposed cuts highly visible, the mayor drove home the real effects of the government’s strangulation attempt and may well have achieved a better outcome.

Over 12 years of Tory government the UK’s public services have been degraded, abolished and subject to death-by-a-thousand-cuts, as local authorities have desperately tried to maintain standards with less and less money.

Closed libraries and swimming pools, cuts to social and youth services, slashed budgets for street maintenance, and housing repair, along with so much else, have all made life far harder for numerous people.

Most of these cuts go unnoticed at the time except by separate minorities who suffer, and it’s only when there’s a full reckoning and we find a service we relied on no longer exists that the true magnitude of the damage inflicted on us by an uncaring government strikes home.

Sometimes, a palpable threat, such as the slashing of bus routes across the capital, is the only thing that gets people to take notice.

DON KELLER
Address supplied